The Spanish Cape Mystery

Last updated
The Spanish Cape Mystery
TheSpanishCapeMystery.JPG
First edition
Author Ellery Queen
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Series Ellery Queen mysteries
Genre Mystery novel / Whodunnit
Publisher Stokes (US)
Gollancz (UK)
Publication date
1935
Media typePrint
OCLC 4414051
Preceded by The Chinese Orange Mystery  
Followed by Halfway House  

The Spanish Cape Mystery is a novel that was written by Ellery Queen as the ninth book of the Ellery Queen mysteries. Published in April in hardcover by Frederick A. Stokes, it also appeared as a "complete, book-length novel" in the April 1935 issue of Redbook .

Contents

Plot summary

The story begins with a pretty young heiress and her uncle seated outside their summer home on Spanish Cape, escaping the guests at her parents' house party. Suddenly a one-eyed giant bursts onto the scene and kidnaps them, misidentifying the uncle as John Marco, a house guest. The giant removes them both, ties the heiress to a chair in an empty neighbouring home, and disappears with the uncle. Ellery Queen and a friend arrive at the neighbouring home in the morning and release the heiress, but by the time they can return her to her home, Marco has been found on the terrace, strangled, and nude except for an enveloping opera cape.

The house party and the household contain many people who had good reason to want the victim out of the way, some because he was blackmailing them. As Ellery is investigating the crime, another household member commits suicide out of sheer desperation at the potential revelation of a dreaded secret. By the time the uncle escapes his captor and swims to shore, Ellery is ready to reveal the identity of the murderer and the reason for the victim's nudity in a dramatic final scene.

Literary significance and criticism

(See Ellery Queen.)

The character of Ellery Queen was probably initially suggested by the novels featuring detective Philo Vance by S.S. Van Dine, which were very popular at the time. At this point in time, however, Van Dine's sales were dropping and Queen's were rising. This novel was the ninth in a long series of novels featuring Ellery Queen, and the last to contain a nationality in the title. The introduction to this novel contained a detail which is now not considered part of the Ellery Queen canon. The introduction is written as by the anonymous "J.J. McC.", a friend of the Queens. Other details of the lives of the fictional Queen family contained in earlier introductions have now disappeared and are never mentioned again. The introductory device of "J.J. McC." disappears after the novel following this one, Halfway House—though a character named "J.J.," a "Judge McCue," appears as a friend of the Queens in the much later novel Face to Face.

The "nationality" mysteries had the unusual feature of a "Challenge to the Reader" just before the ending is revealed—the novel breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the reader. This is the final instance of the challenge. "For years now I have been challenging my readers to solve my cases by the exercise of close observation, the application of logic to the winnowed facts, and a final correlation of the individual conclusions... Technically there are no snags. The facts are all here at this point... Can you put them together and logically place your finger on the one and only possible murderer?"

"A fair example of the chat and comment that enliven the Queen cases for some and make them a trifle too rich for others." [1]

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

This was the first novel from which an Ellery Queen film was made, and in the same year as its publication. The 1935 film The Spanish Cape Mystery , with Donald Cook as Ellery Queen and Guy Usher as Inspector Queen, was only moderately faithful to the book. It eliminated the nudity angle, with the murder victim found wearing swim trunks under his cape.

Related Research Articles

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Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder mysteries. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character, and these books were among the most popular American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. Under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, they also edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. Dannay founded, and for many years edited, the crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961 onwards, Dannay and Lee commissioned other authors to write thrillers using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; some such novels were juvenile and were credited to Ellery Queen Jr. They also wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, which featured the detective Drury Lane. Several movies, radio shows, and television shows were based on their works.

Edward Dentinger Hoch was an American writer of detective fiction. Although he wrote several novels, he was primarily known for his vast output of over 950 short stories. He was one of the few America fiction writers of his generation who supported himself financially through short story publication, rather than novels or screenplays.

Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, an English crime writer and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson. She also wrote fiction and a 1940 autobiography, Three-a-Penny, as Anne Meredith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Golden Age of Detective Fiction</span> Era of murder mystery novels

The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s.

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<i>The Spanish Cape Mystery</i> (film) 1935 film by Lewis D. Collins

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References

  1. Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig. A Catalogue of Crime (revised edition) New York: Harper and Row, 1989 (first published 1971). ISBN   0-06-015796-8